By Joseph Lamin Kamara
The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease has had enormous impacts on Sierra Leone’s education. Whether one views the country’s immediate pre-Ebola educational system as a failure or as a success, the outbreak has exacerbated that failure or posed a setback to the success. Nevertheless, education in the country has seen more challenges than successes.
Since late 1960s, Sierra Leone has seen several political instabilities which have eventually pretermitted much of the success the country made earlier in education. Coup d’états, scramble for diamonds and a long violent civil conflict are mostly responsible for the country’s descent from being the ‘Athens of West Africa’ to performing consistently abysmally in public examinations.
The establishment of the Gbamanja Commission after about a 90-percent failure of students in the 2008 Basic Education Certificate and the West African Senior School Certificate examinations proved the country had a crippling educational system before the outbreak. Even with reformations such as an additional year to senior schools and an adoption of a single shift school system – the latter is yet to be implemented – massive failure in external examinations has remained, though the natures of examination papers have been simplified.
Problems relating to payment of teachers’ and lecturers’ salaries, shortage of teachers, infrastructural incapacities, among others, have also been at the heart of Sierra Leone’s educational problems.
Efforts by successive administrations of the University of Sierra Leone (USL) in recent times to achieve the status of a 21st Century university or to reclaim the kind of point the university scored in academic excellence in early times can go further to show the crippling nature of education in the country.
Efforts therefore were being made to address some of those problems when Ebola broke out in the country. The Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Brima Michael Turay, says the outbreak has hindered recruitment of teachers which they resumed in 2013. According to Turay, a moratorium issued by their development partners such as World Bank Group had halted the employment of teachers in 2006 because the partners wanted to realize the number of teachers in the country and the progress their employment was effecting.
According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, education was on the right track in the country before Ebola.
“Many children were in school and gender parity was being realized in primary schools,” said Wongani Grace Nkhoma Taulo, UNICEF’s chief of education in Sierra Leone.
Homework and more home work
Six months after Ebola broke out in the country, the Austrian-founded charity SOS Children’s Villages, reporting how dire the situation of education for children was before Ebola, stated on its website that primary attendance rates were 73% for boys and 76% for girls. At secondary level, the charity added, there were just 40% for boys and 33% girls.
The outbreak kept schools and colleges closed for almost nine months, since July 31 when President Ernest Bai Koroma declared a public health emergency to April 14 when they were officially declared reopened. This has left the current academic year and the next with just two terms each, as against the three, previously.
Clearly, the periods teachers and lecturers have to do their normal work are not enough. It’s either the next two or three years will also be advanced into or inefficiency will be the case in schools and colleges.
“Before the Ebola outbreak, there was enough time to complete our syllabuses, but now teachers give loads of assignments. They just say: ‘Do this. Do this . . . ,’” says Florence Taylor, a 17-year-old pupil in Senior Secondary School (SSS) III, at the Freetown Secondary School for Girls (FSSG).
Miss Adama Elizabeth Kamara, the mistress of Class III Blue at Tabernacle Primary School in Freetown, says: “For us to cover up for the whole academic year, we give them many home works.”
Sorie Ndigi Dumbuya, Registrar of USL, said they should have started the 2014/15 academic year work in the first week of November, but they were unable to do so until mid April. Mr Dumbuya said the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS), a constituent of USL, could not conduct reference exams for 2013/14 for clinical year students because the training of clinical year students involved direct contacts with patients in hospitals.
The registrar however said that it was possible for them to reclaim the normal time frame, but that would be gradual.
“We cannot start next session in October. The earliest time will be in February, next year.”
He said the normal academic calendar contained 15 weeks and the university would not attempt to compress it because “that will have implication on quality, but we may finish earlier than the previous year.” And because they may finish the 2015/16 session earlier, apparently, that’s how Mr Dumbuya said the university would reclaim the normal time frame.
Halted development
The Ebola outbreak has also negatively impacted the intellectual capacity of the University of Sierra Leone. At the graduation of 2nd May, which was to have been held last December, the Acting Vice-Chancellor and Principal of USL, Professor Ekundayo Jonathan David Thompson, announced that many members of the faculty of COMAHS including Dr Sheik Umar Khan had succumbed to Ebola.
The graduation itself had an urgent conduct, without the usual handshakes between graduands and university authorities and lasting less than two hours.
“Quite a number of our development projects have either come to a standstill or have significantly slowed down,” added the university registrar.
Mr Dumbuya said the outbreak halted the construction of a seven-storey-multipurpose building at the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM) and a six-storey structure which is an expansion of the university’s secretariat.
“That’s because those projects are being constructed using internally generated income. And since the greatest source of funding of the University constitutes fees paid by students, during the Ebola outbreak we were not able to open session and not able to collect fees.”
Although the Ebola outbreak has badly impacted USL, Professor Thompson also said at the graduation that it had “paradoxically opened small windows of opportunity in the areas of partnership, community service, and research.
“In October 2014, the University of Sierra Leone, through COMAHS, collaborated with the UK Military Medical Team in the Ebola Training of Trainers Course at the Faculty of Nursing.”
The Vice-Chancellor added that students of COMAHS have been deployed around the country helping in the prevention of the spread of Ebola.
The university registrar also said that COMAHS was participating in an Ebola vaccine trial and had offered a successful collaboration to the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and the university would embark on a research on the Ebola virus.
Radio teaching
Although government implemented a school broadcast system with teaching through radio and television during the period schools were closed, the long break had negative impacts on pupils and there are questions about the success of the ‘stop-gap’ measure.
The UNICEF’s education chief said the long break would have negative impacts on the cognitive developments of pupils, as many of them were hardly engaged in an academic activity. If they were, she indicated, they hardly were serious. And many secondary school pupils have confirmed this.
Jasonta Coker, head girl of the Annie Walsh Memorial Senior Secondary School (AWMSS) in Freetown, told Politico last week that though she attempted to study her notes, she actually treated school work with a lacklustre approach because she did not feel school would reopen shortly. The 18-year-old lady is in her final class in school and has just taken the private West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), and she is again waiting to take the government WASSCE. She complains that the Ebola outbreak has caused “delay for us to complete our syllabuses.”
FSSG’s Florence Taylor said the outbreak had deprived her of her interaction with people who had more knowledge than her, from whom she learned a great deal.
Also, the Ebola outbreak has left sitting modes in many schools adjusted; an effort by school authorities to prevent body contacts among pupils, which health officials say is the easiest means of contracting Ebola.
Miss Adama Elizabeth Kamara, the Mistress of Class III Blue at Tabernacle Primary School in Freetown, explained that before the outbreak three pupils used to sit on a long bench in the class, but now “no matter how long the bench is, they sit in twos.”
Even the pupils now appear to have fear among them of contracting the virus, despite preventive measures such as hand washing and body temperature checking.
“I feel bad when my classmates sit near me. I don’t want them to touch me,” Josephus Jah, a nine-year-old class III pupil at Tabernacle told Politico.
Teenage pregnancy
Apparently, information about Ebola has found itself in the school curriculum. Every morning, before the normal school work begins in especially primary schools, teachers now spend about 10 or 15 minutes explaining what Ebola is, how it can be contracted and how it can be prevented.
“Every morning we teach them what Ebola is and we also teach them the preventive measures,” said Mr Augustine Marah, a class III teacher at Tabernacle.
Due to the Ebola outbreak, government is now paying school fees for pupils and this is expected to continue until next year. Many schools have however complained they have not received any payments.
The Ebola outbreak has many effects on education in the country, but the most topical of all is teenage pregnancy among school going pupils and government’s efforts of preventing them from school and taking the BECE while ‘visibly pregnant’.
There has not been any comprehensive and absolute report yet with regards the total number of schoolgirls who became pregnant during the outbreak, but the founder of the Peagie Woobay Scholarship Fund says her group has discovered 82 teenage pregnancies in the northern district of Koinadugu and 104 in Moyamba District in the south of the country, the two districts in which the charity operates.
In an address to the nation on 22 January, President Ernest Bai Koroma announced “education provisions [were being put] in place for girls who became pregnant during Ebola period and are unable to return to school.”
However, the United Nations, some civil society groups and rights’ campaigners are dismayed at government’s decision of banning pregnant girls in schools and even taking the BECE.
In its press release on 6 May, Education for All Sierra Leone Coalition, a group of education right organizations, urged government to “publicly announce the government’s commendable position on encouraging girls who have become mothers to go back to formal education; remove urgently the decision that forbids pregnant girls to attend the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE); make provisions for pregnant girls to attend BECE in collaboration with the West African Examinations Council; introduce policies, programmes and mechanisms, based on the principle of the best interest of the child.”
UNICEF says it’s in the process of planning to do a study on the impacts of the Ebola outbreak on education in the country, but its chief of education at the country office says there are reports about school children having been involved in economic activities since schools were closed. Wongani Taulo fears that the possibility of many of the girls to return to school is largely grim.
“Parents will look at opportunity cost. They feel the money they get when they send their children to the market is better than sending them to school,” says Taulo.
Taulo also says that they have unconfirmed reports of increase in teenage pregnancies in the country which she said they would verify.
“Our position is that no child should be denied the right to education, she adds.
Legalizing teenage pregnancy
To the UNICEF’s education chief there is no harm in allowing pregnant girls back in schools. She says countries like Zambia, Kenya and her home Malawi “have policies that allow pregnant girls back in schools.”
However, schools in the country find it impossible to accept pregnant schools, and Esther Yeanoh Kamara, an 18-year-old and SSSIII pupil at FSSG, shares the same argument with the minister of Education, Dr Minkailu Bah, that allowing pregnant girls in schools among non-pregnant ones amounts to legalizing teenage pregnancy.
“If they come back to school, they will instigate some of us, and we all will feel nothing is wrong with teenage pregnancy,” says Miss Kamara.
To Mr Thomas Amidu Sesay, a teacher of English Language at FSSG, parents are largely to blame for the problem, particularly during the Ebola outbreak. Mr Sesay thinks because restriction has been placed on movements, parents should keep and monitor their children at homes.
“There is a breakdown in family in our society, in terms of moral standards,” he tells Politico.
That’s almost the same position of the deputy chairperson of the Council of Principals, Mrs Ophelia Morrison who doubles as principal of AWMSS. Mrs Morrison states two factors she says are responsible for the success of a girl child. The first one she says is “the attitude and determination of the child” to become successful in life and the second, she says, is “the support given by the family.”
The deputy chair of the country’s school principals uses the situation as a case to prove wrong the argument that teachers do contribute greatly to the failure of pupils.
“This shows you that the parents are responsible. For all the eight months they stayed with their parents, what were they [the parents] doing?” she argues.
Nevertheless, as Mr Thomas again mentions that poverty is another key factor responsible for teenage pregnancies, Peagie Woobay states that her foundation’s research, late last year, in Moyamba and Koinadugu found out that it was either poverty or failure to prevent pregnancy during sex that led to the situation.
Woobay is a Sierra Leonean living in Sweden, but manages her foundation which is dedicated to supporting teen mothers with education. She is 44 years of age and became first pregnant at 15 while in school in Freetown. She says the danger and her fear that once a schoolgirl becomes pregnant in Sierra Leone she can easily drop out impelled her to form the foundation when she succeeded in education.
That’s the fear the UN, Education for All Sierra Leone Coalition and others hold and that fear bears reality on the ground.
Back to school
Three girls that should have now been in the second level of junior school at Holy Rosary Secondary School in Pujehun Town, who have been benefitting from a diaspora-supported scholarship have been dropped out of the scheme because they have become pregnant. They now sit at homes.
Another two in Jendema, in Pujehun District, on the border with Liberia, now sell roasted corns on the streets and their families have neglected them.
As Politico has been investigating the impacts of Ebola on education in the country, we last week found a young lady who appeared to be a school going pupil but was carrying a fairly strong pregnancy on a street in central Freetown.
Seidatu Kawa [not her real name], 20, said she was carrying a seven-month pregnancy and had been attending a secondary school in the northern district headquarter town of Kambia. Kawa should have been in the second class of junior school, but she said a senior schoolmate impregnated her and the shame for her in her community forced her mother and her ‘man’ to bring her to Freetown, though her mother initially drove her from home.
The pregnant girl said that she used to engage in sex before Ebola and that she was using contraceptives, but when the last one finished she feared going back to the clinic.
“I was having sex before Ebola, but I did not feel school would reopen shortly so I did not worry about pregnancy,” she told Politico shyly.
The pregnant schoolgirl said she would be shy going back to school with the pregnancy, but she wanted to return there after her pregnancy.
“I want to go back to school after I give birth, but I don’t know [if] I will have support,” she said.
The Kambian urged government to make provisions for her to return to formal education after her pregnancy.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, Theo Nicol, says the decision to keep pregnant girls out of school is not a decision of the President or the education minister, but “a government policy.”
He told Politico on Monday that various rights’ groups have approached President Koroma, but the President told them he would consult with relevant stakeholders.
Until then, the minister said, “the policy remains the same.”
Mr Nicol said the girls would return to school, but after their pregnancies because government feared that they would never do well in school.
“Before the policy in 2014, all the pregnant girls who took the previous BECE – about 149 of them – failed,” he said.
The minister said their own concern was providing antenatal care for the girls and there was an equipped free healthcare system in place for that.
© Politico 26/05/15
